Customer Reviews

Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace

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Several distinguishing feature of this very good book on diversity deliver value to the reader. Firstly, the book goes into the causal roots of workplace exclusion practices of employers as also their consequences. The analysis focuses on the groups that are commonly excluded in different parts of the world. Secondly, the book provides latest information on changing workplace realities across countries, including aspects of legislation, demography, and developments in social policy. This has been done through analyses, vignettes and case studies from different parts of the world. Thirdly, the book envisages a comprehensive "inclusive workplace model" which among others includes policies, procedures, and programmes that can help implement development of an inclusive workplace. Fourthly, the book gives cogent explanation for developing globally diverse workforce as a business case. Fifthly, it carries both theoretical content and practical propositions. The book has included some thoughtful illustrations and practical solutions to problems involved in developing a globally inclusive workplace.

While the book has the above-mentioned merits, I must add that the the author's definition of diversity could have been wider so as to include differences related with individual idiosyncrasies, competencies, roles, needs and mindsets as well? She has dealt with group differences such as those associated with race, age, sex, region, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, etc. Of course, that might have made her project heavier.

Overall, the book is a very useful resource for conceptualizing and implementing an inclusive workplace agenda. It reflects a global perspective and will interest readers across countries. The book has demonstrated well that when diversity and inclusion are being practiced as business strategies, they help in providing competitive advantage. It rightly suggests that in order to meaningfully practice DM people must be educated and held accountable for demonstrating new behaviours and competencies envisaging support for a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Debi S. Saini

MDI, Gurgaon, India

Mor Barak's Managing Diversity is a seminal work because of her contextualizing diveristy in terms of global inclusiveness. Not only does the book provide information and incisive insights, but is comprehensive in covering the topic and citing the very best of the current literature in the field.

This book will appeal to anyone who desires to heighten their awareness of this topic and be completely up to date with the literature (and ahead in some respects). The book will be particularly useful in undergraduate and graduate courses that feature diversity, globalization or understanding the complexity of the work force. In such courses, it could serve as the primary or one of the primary texts. For more general courses on business, management, social services, public administration and non-profit management, the book would fill a vital gap created by the paucity of focus on the topic (one chapter on diversity or multiculturalism in a management text is not enough to prepare students for an increasingly diverse and inclusive environment).

I recommend the interested reader and educator peruse the table of contents and materials presented here. This will surely inform them of the meticulousness of Mor Barak's coverage of the topic and tempt them with the promise of new and insightful knowledge-- a promise she delivers on in a well-written and easy to understand style. I commend this book to you.

Jon S. Sager

I write as a retired federal Administrative Judge who decided hundreds of employment discrimination cases and spoke at scores of conferences and forums on the subject of diversity. Today, I teach social work and law at USC and rely upon this book as a primary text. I strongly recommend Dr. Morbarak's excellent volume as a well written, understandable and thoughtful guide to both employers and employees to understand the values and to avoid or respond to conflicts of the modern workplace. She has provided insights, explanations, and models for dealing with situations in the increasingly globalized world of work.

Employee cohesion and high morale in the workplace are generally accepted, along with quality products and services, as contributing to a company's healthy bottom line. To be successful in today's complex multinational and multicultural as well as domestic work environments, however, businesses must concurrently manage new thresholds of employee, supplier and customer diversity at several levels all at once.

A welcome addition to the emerging dialogue on diversity management is Michàlle Mor Barak's inclusive workplace model. In Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace (Sage Publications, 2005), she encourages work organizations to adopt a new perspective on diversity. Building on its expanding importance to the workplace amid new socio-demographic and legislative trends, Managing Diversity comprehensively addresses the corporate role for inclusiveness as part of workforce management as well as at community, state and federal, and international levels.

In essence, the inclusive workplace is a layered ideal, each level of which complements the others and advances corporate effectiveness. At the workplace level, it honors individual and inter-group differences, while at the community level it also contributes to its surroundings, regardless of whether profits are directly realized. Within the wider environment, it expresses concern for and supports advancement of such disadvantaged or marginalized groups as immigrants, women, and the working poor. And in the instance of multinational companies, it willingly collaborates with individuals, groups and organizations across national and cultural boundaries.

Of note is the practical relevance threaded throughout the book, such as the important distinction that Mor Barak makes between visible (i.e., observable differences) and invisible diversity (such not readily apparent attributes as religion, education, tenure or world view). While discrimination toward either kind is unacceptable, the nature of invisible diversity presents human resource managers the added challenge of a consideration that is difficult to monitor.

A portion of Managing Diversity delves into the complex web of skills, knowledge, and values that combine to shape the inclusive workplace. From an overview of diversity-related employment legislation around the world, to theoretical perspectives on diversity and its meaning in different cultural contexts, to cross-cultural communications, the book is filled with colorful, well-researched examples. The inclusive workplace model itself, however, is applicable to work organizations large and small, transcending specific industries or where they are headquartered in the world.

In this excellent text, Mor Barak, who holds joint appointments at the University of Southern California Schools of Social Work and Business, has made a substantial and unique contribution to the human resources and management literature.

It was a great book. I used it for my college subject. It's a book I will use for years to come in business and life.